“Bad” reviews

I once posted about the value of reviews for authors, and the way they can influence or help the author in his or her writing. One of the most unnerving things about a review is that it can be a bad one. This is also known as the negative, or “no star” review.

But how bad is such a review really? In my view it is more important to see how many of those there are. Is there only one bad review, and the rest is at least average, then it is important to realise that the one bad review is an exception. It is always possible that someone reads your book and does not like it.

What does the majority of reviewers say? Do they like your book? Or do they all blast it? In the former case, you don’t have much to worry, except perhaps how to maintain or improve your quality or writing. In the latter case you should seriously reconsider your work. Perhaps you are not writing in the proper genre? Perhaps you went out on a limb with this book and slipped?

Be realistic: not everyone will love the fruits of your hard-wrought labour. There will always be people who like romance more than science-fiction, people who think a fantasy-story about elves is much better than the coolest blood-ridden vampire horror. As I see it, there are two things important: 1 – that you love what you made, and 2 – that the majority of people who read it do as well.